All that is right and wrong with sports, video games, girls, beer, and everything in between.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

SOTU

I've got a couple posts in the hopper. Two of my favorite subjects will soon be covered here - technology and food. The posts are ready to go, have been for a while. I was going to post one tonight, but... I dunno, I kinda feel like doing a state-of-the-union sort of thing. A lot of things have happened that I haven't gotten around to addressing.

First off, I would be remiss if I didn't toot my own horn. I'm proud to say that a throwaway joke post from a couple months ago now has over 9,000 hits. I think this means I finally graduate internet junior high. My readership has expanded for 7 months straight. Thanks to all of you, especially the 12 of you that actually read SOTU-type pieces like this.

I'm leaving Korea soon, for an undetermined to indefinite period of time. My contract ends and Dr. Kickass is getting hitched, so my presence is required in 'merica. I was pretty bummed about this for a while. The blog is doing well, I'm generally at peace with my situation here, I was offered a monthly column for a magazine here, my tech set-up is pretty much perfect, I like my apartment and my neighborhood, and there's been a lot of interesting things going on. Life is, dare I say, pretty good.

Fortunately, I've hit a pretty good run of travel luck as of late, and I'm no longer bummed to be leaving, mainly because what lies ahead is going to be motherfucking awesome. My school, as pursuant to their contractual obligations, has purchased me a ticket back home. Fortunately for me, they bought me a round-trip ticket rather than a one way since it was cheaper that way. This means that a month after I return home, I've got a free ride back across the Pacific. I planned on traveling in either Southeast Asia or South America for a few months after the wedding, but I didn't know which to choose. I know, real first world problem here, determining my extended third world home. I was leaning toward Asia anyway, and now that I can get back here for free, the choice is obvious. I've already bought a dirt cheap ticket from Seoul to Kuala Lumpur, so this trip that I've been talking about for a thousand years finally kicks off in April.

Sure, I'm nervous. I'll land in KL and take the bus (which I've already paid for) into the city. When my bus arrives at KL Sentral Station, I'm on my own. I'll be futureless. I'll be looking for a hostel to spend my first night on the road in. Hell, maybe I'll chicken out and book that hostel in advance, but I'll still be pretty much exclusively living in the present tense. Home is where my iPad is. Planes, buses, trains, boats, or stay, my options will be pretty much limitless every single day, at least until I run out of money. There is no exit strategy. I could be on the road 4 months, 10 months, 2 years, or the rest of my life. I could be robbed on the streets of Bangkok a few days in and have to go home, or I could pick up random bar tending and English teaching gigs and stay out there indefinitely. Actually, other than the getting robbed thing, all of this sounds pretty awesome, so that outweighs the nervousness.

So, where will this leave this here blog? That's to be determined, but I presume there will be some considerable change. I'm not sure if my core audience wants to hear a bunch of stories about trekking though the jungles of Sumatra or drinking at the beach bars of Sumatra. Chances are, I'll spin off a new blog specifically about the trip for anybody who cares about my adventures or travel writing. I presume I'll still keep this space as well for everything else, the usual assortment of girls, sports, pop culture, dick and fart jokes, election stuff, and general misanthropy. I'm sure that I'll complain in both spaces. In frigid Korea, I can't wait to start complaining about the tropical heat in April.

Speaking of complaints, I have a few unrelated things I want to complain about. Surprising, I know.

First - stamp cards from restaurants. I had 4 stamps on a Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwich card, and I only needed 5 to get a free one. Sure, I acquired all 4 last year and haven't been to Dunkin since, even though there is one 3 minutes from my house. Anyway, I went there for breakfast on Saturday and was more excited than I should have been about stamp number 5. I ordered a sandwich and pulled out my card (which had of course spent the whole year in my wallet) but was denied, that promotion was over. I figured my best move was to kill myself then and there, but since I didn't have any sort of lethal weapon on my person at the time I begrudgingly paid $3.50 for my sandwich and got on the subway to eat it. I realized that if I suddenly had access to a time machine, the first thing I would do was to go back to January of 2011 to purchase one additional bagel sandwich. Not two, one. Knowing I had one potential free breakfast sandwich would be far more valuable than actually getting one. Time permitting, I would also kill Hitler, but priority number one had to be my Dunkin Donuts stamp.

Second - casinos. I went to the casino on Sunday, and I'll never understand their logic. There was one $5 blackjack table (packed, of course), another full $10 table, and then a bunch of empty $50 and $100 tables. The house has an advantage in blackjack, right? Why not change a $100 table to a fiver? The whole time we were there, zero people sat at the $100 table. Sunday evening clearly isn't the time for high rollers. Why not double the amount of space for low-class scumbags such as myself? Sure, winning big bets is better for the casino, but isn't it better to win small bets than to pay a dealer to sit and do her nails at an empty table? It's not like we would have decided to play at the $100 table instead, not on a Sunday at 7 p.m.

Third - the election. But mainly because I miss Perry, Cain, Trump, Bachman, even Palin. That was some world-class crazy. Good times. Plus, just when I'm trying to figure out if I hate Romney or Gingrich more, Santorum came back today. Oh yeah, I forgot about him, he's the worst of all. I'm not a move-to-Canada if my guy doesn't win kinda guy, but I can pretty much guarantee that I will not set foot in America if Santorum wins. Empty threat, I know, cuz like I said before, he won't. My sports predictions are always wrong, but I'm right about this kind of stuff.